1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for processing materials by interaction of the same with a magnetic field or fields constituting a magnetic vortex.
Magnetic devices including permanent magnets and electromagnets have for many years been used to construct machines that utilize the attraction and repulsion of magnetic poles to cause motion of elements affixed to or placed near such magnets. Such machines include rotary motors, linear motors, and magnetic levitation systems for trains and the like. Such devices have also been used to construct machines that generate magnetic fields for containment or acceleration of charged particles, for example in cyclotrons, linear accelerators, and Tokamak type nuclear fusion reactors.
However, there has been little work done in the direct application of permanent magnets and electromagnets to materials processing. Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method utilizing permanent and/or electromagnets to process materials (“magnetically susceptible” materials) by the effects of a magnetic field.
Another object of the present invention is to utilize the interaction of magnetic poles of the same magnetic polarity, i.e., a magnetic field in “opolarity,” to process such materials.
Another object of the present invention is to utilize the effects of a concentrated magnetic field in opolarity to process materials by inducing quantum and wave mechanical effects upon materials so as to change their physical and chemical properties and to change their chemical composition and to induce magnetic properties into such materials.
Another object of the present invention is to utilize the effects of a magnetic field in opolarity to generate a “magnetic vortex” in which such materials are compacted, aggregated, separated, reaggregated, manipulated, tumbled, and levitated during material processing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Opposite magnetic poles attract each other and like magnetic poles repel each other. Michael Faraday observed that a magnetic material placed in the space substantially equidistant between the ends of two opposed bar magnets having the same magnetic polarity (that is, poles that repelled each other) seemed to be unaffected by the magnetic field between the two opposed ends.
Faraday conducted essentially the same experiment with four permanent bar magnets in which the ends of the same magnetic polarity were placed at each of the respective sides of an open-ended square fabricated from cardboard with like poles adjacent the square into the center of which he lowered a small ball of bismuth (a diamagnetic material) attached to the end of a string. He had previously made the magnetic “lines of force” of this arrangement visible by placing a piece of stiff paper over the top of the square and surrounding magnets and then sprinkling iron filings onto the stiff paper. By lightly tapping the paper to agitate the iron filings, the filings aligned themselves along the respective magnetic “lines of force.” Faraday found no effect on the suspended ball. He also placed six equally sized bar electromagnets the ends of which were of the same magnetic polarity around what constituted a cube into the center of which he again lowered various items in order to determine the presence of any magnetic effects and he was unable to determine any effect on the material so placed. See Faraday's Diary; Being the Various Philosophical Notes of Experimental Investigations by Michael Faraday, Seven Volumes, London, laboratory notes of Sep. 2, 11, 13, 15, and Dec. 14, 19, 1854, 6 Diary 288, 299, 316, 323, 328, 350, 356: G. Bell and Sons, 1932, the same in Experimental Researches in Electricity, New York: Dover Publications, 1965, entry 3341 at page 553 and following. Thus it has been known since classical antiquity that when like magnetic poles of the same magnetic polarity are placed opposite to each other there exists a region between the poles where the magnetic field intensity, i.e., detectible attractive forces, is essentially zero whereas the repulsive forces are at a maximum. However, prior to the present invention there has been no application of this phenomenon, or of related phenomena, to the processing of materials.